A while ago I was given a lucid dream.(A state of knowing your dreaming while still in the dream.) In front of me stood a large, wood-clad restaurant. It reminded me of the tourist type places my husband and I had been to, out at the coast. Instead of carved sea gulls and fishermen's nets for decoration, large statues of Buddha's, colorful paintings of Chakra's and Jesus' lined the walls. I could sense an unseen presence beside me. On the front of the restaurant hung a sign that read: "Soup, Ring, Bean Restaurant." I loved it! But still couldn't help but wonder why the odd name. The personage beside me telepathically told me to say the name out loud. I did. "Say it again faster." the personage said. "Soup-rin-been?", " Souprinbeing?", " Supreme Being!" I could hardly contain my laughter.
At first, other than being entertained by the dream I was at a loss as to the dream's meaning. Then it hit me. The dream was trying to tell me that I needed to be edified more by spiritual food and less by clinical observation. Who says the cosmos don't have a sense of ha, ha! When attempting to recall your dreams it is important to think in terms of images and not spoken language. As the subconscious mind deals mostly with imagery and less with linguistics, the brain likes to output information the same way it comes in. Close your eyes and roll them up and toward the middle of your forehead. This is the area known as the third eye. The third eye is commonly known for being the center of psychic activity in the brain. (see chapter on E.S.P.) This center can also aid in the recovery of dream memories.
Begin to SEE the memory of the dream in your minds eye. Once your are able to see it, you are then ready to translate it onto paper. The amount of details you thought you could not recall, but begin to recall, through the process of writing will surprise you.
To help ensure that you will remember more of your dreams, suggest to yourself before falling asleep that upon awakening you will remember your dreams. Place a note pad and a pen on your night stand or within easy reach. When you wake up and recall partial or entire dreams, record it immediately no matter what time it is. If you think, "I'm too tired, I'll write it down in the morning." you won't, at least not in the detail that you would when it was still fresh in your mind. The next step is to analyze your dreams. Dream books, which can prove helpful, cannot encapsulate the dreamer's individual symbols all of the time.
Although some symbols are uniform throughout most dream books, such as the symbol of the snake meaning sex, many interpretations vary radically from one dream book to the next. Everyone attaches meanings to objects, people and events that are different for each individual. Lettuce, for example, reminds you of salad is a correct statement for most people. Yet, if you spent your summers as a teenager on a lettuce farm where you experienced your first kiss, then lettuce could mean something all together different to you. Dream books can give general meanings of salad or lettuce that would suffice for many but not for all. It all depends on the individuals personal associations that cannot be taken into account by a book. Dreams usually convey an overall impression or feeling. If a particular object recurred throughout the dream, think of what that object means to you. For example, if you had a dream of a cat chasing a dog through the meadow as people watched, you would rate each symbol in order of importance or degree of puzzlement to you. If you found the meadow to have the most meaning, then your dream is tryingto convey something to you about your environment. If the dog being chased by the cat is perplexing to you, then the dream is trying to tell you something about your relationships and in this case that a role reversal may be occurring. How you feel about that role reversal will be determined by how you felt when you first saw the cat chase the dog. The people watching are symbolic of how you feel others view that particular relationship from the outside. So as you can see, it is not only the symbols that are important to the interpretation but the meanings and feelings attached to those symbols that make the interpretation correct. By keeping a record of your dreams, these themes and meanings will become apparent over time.
Everyone has the ability to interpret their own dreams by analyzing them in this way. You will know when the right interpretation is found, since you will almost feel a sense of remembrance, like, as they say, 'when somethings right on the tip of your tongue.' The inability to recall the information just moments earlier, suddenly seems silly. That is the feeling of a good interpretation. What is not confronted and dealt with in the waking hours will seep into our dreams, and what seeps into our dreams will affect the quality of our waking hours. The good news is we are not powerless over this cycle.
The key to overcoming this illusion of powerlessness, associated with dreams, is to know that, YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS OVER YOUR DREAM STATE! Once this concept is internalized as a part of your belief system, you will begin to be able to alter small details of your dreams and eventually, with practice, larger details will be at your command. I don't know if I would have fully accepted this rule in the dream realm if I had not first been plagued by anxiety dreams. If you have ever suffered from them, you know how debilitating they can be. When I first started as a florist, I used to dream that my boss would crawl through the bedroom window of my basement apartment and yell in his accent, "Florence, you make me 100 arrangements! You go, Faster, Faster!" All night I'd make arrangements in my sleep cussing and shooting dirty looks begrudgingly at him. When the alarm clock did ring, I was exhausted. This went on nightly for weeks. I grew so tired I could barely function in my waking hours. The option of taking control of my dreams had not yet occurred to me, but I was desperate. One night I fell asleep and as the dream began to resume, I stood up in the dream and yelled, "All right, that is it! You have no right to my time when I am not at the shop! Please leave!" To my astonishment, he turned around and crawled right back out the window, and did not return.
Small children also suffer from anxiety dreams in the form of nightmares. When kids are taught that they have the power to change a monster of a dream into a little fuzzy bunny, for instance, it's funny how they react to this by looking at you like, now ya tell me! They don't even question it. They just do it, and do it well! In my opinion, children who learn to control their dreams feel an increased sense of self-esteem that comes from knowing that they have the power to interact, shape and mold their dream states. My four-year-old's favorite self-induced dream, was of an elaborate birthday party with balloons, cake, clowns, ponies and gifts. He would make his invitation list as he fell asleep. And while dreaming, the invited children would show up to play.
Although entertaining at times, dreams also carry a much deeper meaning. An example of this for myself was the time that I had agreed to be my friend's labor coach. The night she went into labor I was told to get some sleep and they would call me when she was ready. As soon as I fell asleep, a young boy with striking, grey, bluish-green eyes stood in front of me and said, "My name is Christopher James Scott." This happened three times. At the end of the third time I received the call. When the baby was born and opened his eyes, I held my breath and whispered, "Well hello there, Christopher James Scott!" I have never seen more unusual eyes in my life, than the ones I saw on the boy who named himself.
Spirit guides will often use the dream state to speak with us. It is at this time that we are most susceptible to the normally unacceptable. If a spirit were to appear during waking hours, most people would be in a state of shock and disbelief, whereas in the dream state anything goes. This is because dreams do not threaten our ridged sense of reality, as we are more able to grasp spiritual concepts, our dreams become less parable like, and more spiritually enlightening.
My mother had a recurring dream of going to a beautiful place where everyone was dressed in white robes. She would sit in on discussions of deep spiritual matters and converse with them telepathically. She found this place to be warm and comforting, full of peace and love. But when she would inquire about the location of the bathroom facilities, the beings would look at her in a puzzled manner. She would immediately awaken with an urge to go to the bathroom. Although she would remember her dream state experience in great detail, she was unable to remember what was discussed.
Dreams can also unlock the gate to communicating with those who have passed on. Prior to my mother's death, my son had a dream of himself, my father, myself, and my mother driving along a country road. We stopped and let my mother out of the car. She walked toward a bale of hay and sat on it. My father and I put my son back into the car and continued to drive away. My son felt very angry that we had left Grandma behind, though she was smiling and appeared to be very happy. Shortly after that dream my mother passed away.
After my mother's funeral my son and I stayed at my father's house. That same night, my son asked me, "Is Grandma going to be here in the morning to make us pancakes?" (My mother often made them for us as a special treat when we stayed over.) I had tried, inexhaustibly, to explain death to my three-year-old, but he just couldn't comprehend it. Finally I said, "No, Grandma isn't coming back ever, she's gone to heaven." He replied, "Then I hate Grandma!" Before I could say another word, his eyes began to sparkle and a big smile crept over his face. "It's O.K. mom. I understand," he said. "Grandma's happy where she is and when it's my time I'll see her again and she loves me very much." I began to cry. "How did you know that?" I said in shock at his instant understanding. "Grandma just told me." he replied. After hearing this, I felt warm all over. I knew my mother could never bear to leave her adored grandson feeling betrayed by her. All that information, was somehow imparted to him within a split second. He was then able to put into words, exactly what my mother would have said.
When I told my father the following morning, he too began to cry. He said, "Whatever he does today, please don't spank him. He's a special child." (And boy did my son take that ball and run with it for the day). Many years after my mother's death, during my last trimester with my second child, I started to feel depressed, thinking my mother would never be a part of this baby's life. That night I had a dream that my mother spoke to me. She said, "Don't worry. I'll see this child from heaven. When you wake up after having him, look at the sunrise and that will be me smiling down on both of you." The next morning I marveled at the subconscious's ability to create such a comforting dream to console me. It worked. I felt better. Of course mom will see my child, I thought, I was just being silly. A month later when I gave birth to my second child I didn't even think to look at the sunrise. The next day I took my son home. It was early the next morning when I was awakened by my then five year old son, who was yelling, "Mom, Mom come quick!" I leaped out of bed, fearing there was something wrong with the baby. "Isn't it beautiful Mom?" he said, pointing toward the pallet of brilliantly blended, horizontal color that lit up the morning sky. "Yes," I replied, as I tried to choke back the tears that were already rolling down my cheeks, "it is indeed". Although I didn't follow my mother's original instructions, she was still able to reach me with her message of love.
Dreams can also help us in communicating with those around us. During my teenage years, I shared an apartment with three other girls. Sylvia and I had the basement bedrooms. We both worked odd shifts and barely saw each other, yet we felt a strong bond between us. During the night, we were often awakened by our roomies banging on the floor and wall, yelling at us to "be quiet." They claimed we would discuss our days while asking and answering each others questions coherently. We would apparently even laugh out loud.
As an interpreter of dreams I have been asked, "What if you used to dream vividly, in detail, and now you no longer recall even dreaming?" This could be for a number of reasons. You may be under a great deal of stress and/or have other issues in your life that need your immediate attention. Because of this you may have subconsciously decided to let the dream world be put on hold, for a while. If the area of the brain that recovers dreams is not used, it can become rusty. It could also be that your spirit guides are imparting wisdom to you subconsciously that you would reject or be unreceptive to on a conscious level.
One morning as I was about to awaken, I was thinking, why is it that I am reading all these enlightening materials and yet I feel I have made little progress? I still yell at the kids, fight with my husband and cringe when I see the neighbor who likes to talk about the price of toilet paper coming to my door. I thought to myself, "Shouldn't I be beyond all that by now?" The message I received was " don't rush the brush." Being a novice artist I had heard that term before and immediately knew its meaning. It meant if you rush the brush, your painting will lose its focus and the result will be much less than satisfactory.
If we are determined to remember our dreams, they will once again begin to guide, warn, amaze and even amuse us, as well, we will begin to unlock fathomless doorways and pathways of outer and inner realms of learning.
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